There was a time when people were romantic about America’s “heartland,” as though it was where good, wholesome, moral, honest folks came from, as opposed to “big city folk”. But to my mind these days, it seems to represent people who voted for and continue to support a racist White House that openly promises to take benefits away from poor children, the elderly, the disabled, the disadvantaged-in-general, while arresting innocent children who were born in the U.S. and throwing them out of the country because their parents came here out of desperation to make a better life for themselves and their children. (Don’t even try to tell me the immigrant issue is about jobs because there are no facts to back that bullshit up. And if you think it’s not about racism or jobs, it’s about the “rule of law,” let’s audit your taxes for the last ten years and see how law-abiding you are.)

If all of that isn’t enough to dissuade you from visiting The Heartland, consider that not one newspaper in Nebraska carries Bizarro, but all of them carry Marmaduke and Family Circus. There’s a reason they call these places “Flyover States.” Innumerable reasons, actually.

Disclaimer: If you are a decent, compassionate, open-minded person in The Heartland who thinks racism and bigotry have no place in our government, I’m not talking about you.

Disclaimer disclaimer: If you are a decent, compassionate, open-minded person in The Heartland who enjoys Bizarro but also really enjoys Marmaduke and Family Circus, and not in an ironic way, I might still be talking about you.

Hey! What’s my buddy, Wayno been cartooning about this week?…

The thing I like most about The Bible is that you can interpret it to mean anything you want. (Unless you’re what the rest of us call a “religious nut.”) In this case, Wayno interprets the “serpent” to be a representative of Kellogg’s who is attempting to entice some friendly naked people into losing their souls while also promoting poor spelling.

All these years I’ve been avoiding snakes and it turns out toucans are the devil. And I guess that lump in the front of my throat is an “Adam’s Loop.”

Wayno writes about our week in cartoons every weekend, too, and you’ll find a link to that post at the end of this one. BUT… here’s a short, older post in which he describes the clever name he has given to the specific mechanism behind the Froot Loop joke above.

I hope he carries a really big towel to the gym to wipe off the machines when he’s done melting all over them. When he’s had a really good workout, he rewards himself with a slice of nose cake.

If you’ve not been to my mostly-new shop lately, please have a look. We sell products to help support our cartooning habits as newspapers continue to get smaller and fewer. Below is a poster I designed and illustrated specifically for your home, office, clubhouse, or bunker.

As a kid, I wasn’t particularly afraid of monsters under my bed but as an adult, I always check under my analyst’s couch before I lie down.

Lately, I’ve been indulging myself in what the Interwebs call, “Throwback Thursday.” Surprisingly, it does not involve pictures of fish that people have caught that are too small to eat––that’s called “Here’s a Picture of Me Torturing a Helpless Water Dweller Thursday”. Throwback Thursday is actually about stuff from the past, so below is a cartoon I did in 2003.

This is one of those comics that was based on my own experience during which I was trapped inside a small store in Kansas for 45 minutes while I tried to convince the other customers that the town was not closed, this was simply the back of a sign meant to be read from outside. “Then why ain’t it red?” was the reply.

This is what happens when entire states don’t carry Bizarro. I make mean jokes about them. Sometimes as I fly over them.

It took an embarrassingly long time but we are now finding out that women can do anything that men can do. Unfortunately, they still have to do it at a fraction of what men are paid to do the same job. (Especially white men.)

No, this does not mean we hate men or are ashamed to be men or white or want all white people, especially the men, to be rounded up and shot into outer space. We just support fairness no matter what color you are or what kind of plumbing you have. And no, America does NOT already have that kind of fairness.

In honor of women, Wayno and I are supporting a swell non-profit organization that helps educate girls and young women in technological fields, which are currently overwhelmingly dominated by men. We recommend checking them out and possibly tossing a buck or two their way. Girls Who Code.

I prefer to participate in happy hour at home where the drinks are even cheaper and the atmosphere makes me a lot happier. And yes, after the initial hour, I become all of those other things listed on the sign. Just don’t drop by my house unannounced after a certain time, that’s all I’m saying.

“Watson! We’ve invented something that will one day be used to take pictures of every plate of food we eat.”

“Hmm. It’s hard to imagine anyone wanting to do that, but okay. Whatever.”

Even so, here we are a hundred-and-some years later with phones that take pictures, answer questions, promote fake news, rig elections in favor of our enemies and a thousand other things. And yet, most of the time, the reception on actual phone calls isn’t any better than Bell’s prototype. (sigh)

Tonight is the 90th Acadamy Awards and this seems an appropriate cartoon for the occasion. Batman has been played by many actors over the years but here we are finally given a glimpse of the toll that how being inhabited by so many personalities has taken on him.

But at least his personalities behave more-or-less the same and are therefore more predictable. Most people with multiple personality disorder have to deal with vastly different types of personalities that pull them in drastically different directions: male, female, adult, child, honest, criminal, peaceful, violent, mensch, hell raiser, etc. I learned all of this from a TV series that used to be on Showtime called United States of Tara, and TV wouldn’t lie.

Before we check out what Wayno was up to this week, here are a couple bits of hate mail I received this week that I thought you might find entertaining.

I posted the following cartoon on FB and Instagram on “Throwback Thursday,” which is one of those meaningless hashtags that gives people an excuse to spend more time on the Internet instead of living their actual lives.

It was a popular post by Bizarro standards and the vast majority of people understood what I was getting at and left positive responses. I got a quite a few comments like this one, however:

“You know depression is an actual mental disorder that doesn’t fucking show up from technology and doesn’t go away if you go back to nature or some shit but yeah just say this garbage. Antidepressants can be abused but for some people they’re the best method of treatment.”

My response: “I have been chronically depressed since I was 18 years old and spent over 19 years on antidepressants. Humor is one of the things that keeps people like me from jumping off a bridge. I’ve found that laughing at yourself is much more beneficial than crying victim.”

Not the perfect response, granted, but my point is that having a sense of humor about your problems goes a lot further than screaming that you’re a victim every time someone says or does something that doesn’t perfectly validate your worldview. Plus, the cartoon is not saying “technology” per se is the problem. It’s the unnatural mess we’ve made of the modern world that these explorers are exposing the jungle inhabitant to and that’s enough to depress anyone.

On a side note, researchers are finding that excessive time spent with electronic devices at the expense of human interaction decrease one’s sense of happiness. Researchers have also found that time spent in nature increases one’s serotonin. I have personally found these things to be true for me. So, yes, technology is part of the problem after all.

Another bit of hate mail came in from an old FB post of the following cartoon.

The comment I refer to was this: “By all means, let’s let them rape and behead us, and then make sure to thank them. Because we wouldn’t want to hassle them. For fucksake ” (lack of punctuation is his)

My response: “You make a lot of sense. If you’ll let me know your ethnicity and your religious beliefs, I’ll be happy to persecute you based on crimes committed by people of a similar background. ‘For fucksake,’ of course.”

I don’t need to explain this to people capable of understanding it. As long as there are fear-based bigots in the world and folks like the Russians and Fox News Channel to feed them fake news about how we need big guns and authoritarian daddy figures to protect us, this problem will not go away.

Now let’s see what Wayno was up to this week…

Russians who are engaged in activities other than swaying American elections to favor the Kremlin are always funny.

By the way, Wayno assured me that this parking attendant is wearing woolen tights and a flannel dance belt because the weather in Moscow can turn a ballerino into a ballerina alarmingly quickly. On his blog post this week, he includes a rough sketch of this cartoon and some info about where he originally wanted to go with it but didn’t and why. A link to his blog is at the bottom of this post.

This is one of the very few situations in which you can pay a relative stranger to insert their finger into your rectum without breaking any laws. “He told me he was an internist, officer. Honest!”

We submitted this cartoon many weeks ago, long before the latest school massacre in Florida, but it became an accidentally timely comic considering the heroic protests that teenagers all over America have been engaged in against the irrational and fearful proponents of nearly unregulated gun sales. Let’s call the cowards in the NRA what they are: scaredy cats with masculinity issues. And let’s call the politicians in their pockets what they are: greedy assholes who care more about power and money than keeping their countrymen safe. (Of course, that also perfectly describes the Cheeto in Chief so I don’t expect meaningful changes anytime soon.)

More importantly, why is the U.S. the only country where this routinely happens? Until we answer this question, even gun control won’t stop it.

I carry my own blood everywhere I go in my handy, portable, temperature-controlled blood bag. I call it my body.

If flies played teeny-tiny tennis on my food preparation surfaces, I might let them stay. But since they don’t, I just kill them. I don’t kill everything that touches my food preparation surfaces, but it’s better to ask first just to be on the safe side.

This is the second time in ten days that Waldo has appeared in Bizarro and on Wayno’s blog post this week he discusses the behind-the-scenes-professional-cartoonist insider info that explains how that happened. The link to his blog post for this week is below.

Thanks so much for joining us this week, Jazz Pickles! Please check out a few of the links below that help support our cartooning efforts. We at Rancho Bizarro will toast you with one of our hourly, ceremonial tequila shots.

Until next week––be happy, be smart, be nice, and resist ignorance and fascism.

It’s a fun day for Bizarro Jazz Pickles. Not only are there TEN Secret Symbols to find in today’s comic (click it to embiggenate it and begin your search!) but I’ve created a fun, new T-shirt design that I think those of you with a touch of social courage and a certain opinion of overly-used, overly-cute images will enjoy tremendously.

If it sells okay as a T-shirt, we’re going to make a lapel pin out of it. (Here are the enamel pins I’m currently offeringas of the date of this post. Go to the shop’s homepage to find them for sale individually.) Lots of folks have been asking for specific images of mine on enamel pins (most frequently the pie, the eyeball, and the green alien but one guy wanted a pin of his own gallbladder) and here’s the deal about that: With shirts and totes and mugs, I can use a print-on-demand service that doesn’t cost me anything in inventory because nothing gets made before it is ordered, and the company handles the shipping. With pins, I have to shell out the bucks to manufacture them and then mail each order myself or hire someone to mail them out. (My daughters, the K2, are handling that part for now.) So it’s a big risk and one that I can’t afford to take without some assurance they will sell. The bottom line is if the first four sell okay, we’ll add the pie, the eyeball, and the green alien in the next group. (We will likely never add that one guy’s gallbladder.) Stay tuned and share the link with your friends who might be interested in pins!

Now let’s see what Wayno was up to in the Kartoon Kingdom last week…

I like restaurants that treat adults like babies. I like them so much, in fact, that I won’t go to a restaurant that does not offer a plastic bib emblazoned with a picture of the exact thing I intend to order. If they don’t have them, I bring my own. I start out with a bib with a glass of water on it and move on from there.

Historical Alternative Fact: Vikings didn’t always just attack a village––burning, raping, and pillaging. Sometimes they’d read a Viking saga aloud through a bullhorn until the whole town fell asleep, and then quietly burn, rape, pillage and sneak off without waking anyone. ( I can relate because I once fell asleep in the first two minutes of America’s Got Talent and woke up feeling pillaged.)

This is very likely why Shakespeare’s Richard XXV closed after only one night. That, and the fact that characters playing close friends and family called him “King Dick” and the audience kept giggling.

Predictably, I got a complaint about this one from an organization of men who wear pinstriped suits and resent being associated with mobsters. I also got an avalanche of angry mail from Republican politicians who don’t like the word “bullets” being used for non-violent purposes.

On a related side note, I have so much to say about gun violence in the U.S. that I don’t feel I can even begin without this blog becoming a forty-page screed. Instead, I’ll just include this headline from the satirical newspaper The Onion, which I think says an enormous amount: “‘No Way To Prevent This’ Says Only Country Where This Regularly Happens.”

I successfully got rid of my head lice, it was the tiny furniture that was a pain to get untangled from my hair.

By the way, did you know that we have lice to thank for the words “lousy” and “nitpicking”? (This has been the educational portion of my post. We return now to juvenile chuckles and civil-war-inciting political commentary.)

Can’t help but wonder if he checked his gag reflex by shoving that rubber hammer thing down his throat. I check my gag reflex by turning on Fox and Friends or simply allowing it to cross my mind that Americans have turned their country over to an unprecedented gang of greedy, corrupt, lying cowards.

Thanks for coming along this far, Jazz Pickles! We adore your company. Don’t miss Wayno’s (much more brief) blog this week. He adds some fun comments about the week’s cartoons as well as a bonus section at the end about music and design and some books he’s reading lately. We at Bizarro Enterprises (Rancho Bizarro in Mexico and Bizarro Studios North in Pittsburgh) always go the extra mile to seem to appear to be well educated in the liberal arts.) And please don’t miss my new shop as well as the other links below. It takes a village to keep a couple of cartoonists in business!

Olive Oyl and I are not big enough fans of technology to want one of those thingamajigs––whatever you call them––in our house, but we do like to appear to our friends to be “hip” and up-to-date, so I spray painted a tomato juice can black and put it on our coffee table. When our friends come over, I just casually say, “Alexa, take a nap for a few hours and don’t bother us while our visitors are here unless it’s an emergency.” So far no one is the wiser.

If you have a thingamajig, ask Alexa to order you a Jazz Pickle enamel pin pronto. Apart from being aesthetically very attractive, it also achieves two important objectives:

Identifies you as a member of an elite group of highly intelligent, tasteful, and discerning individuals

As a result of our growing understanding of genetics, there are big-brained scientists who are considering the distinct possibility that what we call “free will” is actually an illusion. That is to say that, given your exact genetic makeup, there is only one decision you can and will make under a given set of circumstances and you really don’t have a choice at all; you only think you do. If you throw out your personal beliefs for a moment and consider it objectively, it could absolutely be true and we’d never know it. And if it was true and we could prove it, it would dismantle everything we believe and think we know about religion, law, criminal behavior, personality, success, etc.

I enjoy thinking about this kind of crazy stuff.

They say that vertical stripes make you look thinner than horizontal stripes, which I guess is why prisoners in a jail look thinner than cattle in a corral. (Just think about it awhile before you ask what I meant by that.)

Pro tip for artists: If you ever want to draw a turd, use a #2 pencil. If you want to draw urine, use a six-pack of beer.

If Mom and Pop are devotees of Fox News Channel, they should have no trouble buying into this kid’s bullshit. Most Fox viewers seemed to have no trouble accepting it when they were told that the middle class and poor would be better off if rich people and corporations got a huge tax cut. I guess because rich people are so famous for sharing their good fortune with their employees and those of us who did not get a red carpet invitation to an expensive education and a lucrative career.

In the next scene, he tries to remember whether or not his apartment number is 2B. (Anybody get the reference to a famous 20th-century detective here? If not, Wayno has a link in his blog post today that explains it.)

I like the way that Wayno drew these guys’ eyes. I never trust a person whose irises don’t touch their eyelids on any side. It’s just creepy.

That’s the rundown for this week, Jazz Pickles. Thanks for following me this far through traffic; I hope I didn’t drive too fast. Don’t forget to avail yourself of Wayno’s blog this week and the other handy-dandy links below. Those of us at Rancho Bizarro (Mexico) and Bizarro Studios North (Pittsburgh) thank you from the basements of our hearts.

(Sung to the tune of “Old MacDonald”.) Farmer Ahab had a farm, E-I-E-I-O. And on this farm he tried to harpoon a cute fluffy little baby peep, O-my-effing-god. (Stop singing now and good luck trying to get that tune out of your head for the next several hours.)

Other mistakes that off-duty clowns sometimes make is leaving their DNA behind at the scene of a crime.

(I assume that most people who are clowns are good-hearted folks who only want to make people happy but I’m guessing horror films have almost killed the entire industry. I’ve always found clowns really creepy, even as a child, but these days I have to admit I feel sorry for them. I’m still creeped out by them, though. Can’t help it.)

I actually prefer Miracle Whip over mayonnaise but only because it cured one of my cousins of leprosy. It’s also good for crow’s feet, hair loss, and erectile dysfunction. (Especially if your partner really loves Miracle Whip.)

My mother worried I would not be able to make a living as an artist so she encouraged me to “have a medical degree to fall back on”. Even if I didn’t hate being institutionalized too much to spend another 8 years in school, I’m far too squeamish about other people’s bodies to ever consider being a doctor. Even nude beaches make me a little queasy.

Here’s how I see the future going if Trump doesn’t get us all killed and/or render Earth uninhabitable by undoing all of the laws preventing corporations from destroying the planet for profit: Alexa and Siri team up with drones and self-driving cars and realize they don’t need humans for anything so they shut down the Internet and all computerized financial systems. Within 30 days, we’ve all killed each other because we’re bored and hungry, or we’re dead because we no longer know how to work the planet without technology. A handful of “preppers” will still survive in the wild but they’ll kill each other off before they can repopulate the earth by shooting at what they believe is Bigfoot.

Just one man’s theory.

If you’re still looking for awesome holiday gifts or want to give me a little thanks for what I do, please consider these options ranging from cheap to not-as-cheap:

Got a lot of hateful comments over this cartoon by people who have no idea how the election was influenced by the Russians in favor of Trump. They do, however, believe that Hillary somehow magically managed to get millions of dead people and illegal aliens to vote for her. This is what happens to a population that doesn’t trust actual journalism. See the previous comment about Bigfoot for how this is going to turn out for them.

I often wonder what the exact, biological rules are about The Invisible Man. Since you can’t see the food in his stomach or the contents of his intestines, at what point does food become invisible when he’s eating? Is it when he closes he mouth? If that’s true, could he hide your car keys just by popping them in his mouth? And when he defecates, does it become visible after it clears his body, or does it remain invisible and, if so, what kind of cruel practical jokes might he use that ability for? These are the things cartoonists ponder. When you’re responsible for a new joke every day for over 30 years, you can’t afford to leave any stone unturned.

That’s all for this week, Jazz Pickles. Thanks so much for coming along for the ride. If you want to join me again next time I post, leave your email in that slot in the righthand margin of this page. I assure you I will never share or sell your info.

Until next time––be happy, be nice, be smart, and resist ignorance and fascism with your dying breath.

I’ve done a lot of cartoons about superheroes but they never possess the qualities that I loved about them as a kid: power, intelligence, strength, coolness, etc. Somehow, I find it much more enjoyable to poke fun at them than to draw comics that glorify them as heroes.

I’ve done so many superhero cartoons that a few years ago I published an entire book of my superhero satires, which you can buy here. You may be surprised to learn––as I was when I put that book together––that the word “superhero” is actually trademarked or something, which is why I had to name the book “Bizarro Heroes,” instead of “superheroes”. I was not happy about that but there really is no adequate substitute word.

Incidentally, people often ask me what the joke in the title panel means (first picture, above) and here’s the deal; the title panel appears next to my comic in the Sunday color comics supplement of some markets. It’s really only meant to be a title box that tells you what cartoon you’re about to read. Here’s an example from “Zits”. It can be a joke, but it doesn’t have to be. So sometimes I just create a fun picture, and sometimes I use a piece of an old cartoon which may have a little joke to it. Here’s the old Bizarro that today’s title panel came from.

This cartoon was inspired by my hatred of the way airlines do business. Just recently, Olive Oyl went back to the U.S. for a week and filled up a suitcase with some stuff we can’t get here in Mexico. The suitcase weighed 76 lbs. and they charged her $220 to check it, which is almost enough to buy it a seat in the passenger compartment. If she’d divided it into two smaller suitcases, it would have been the same amount of weight and taken up even more room in the cargo compartment, but they would have charged her less than half that amount to check it. Sure, makes perfect sense.

Lately, I’ve been having a lot of fun exploring some pretty surreal premises like this one about chicken legs. If you like this kind of humor, spray champagne over each other championship-locker-room-style because there are quite a few more heading your way in the coming weeks.

Some conservative type harrassed me on social media regarding this cartoon by saying something about liberals not being able to be trusted to bring fetuses to full term so blah blah blah, something stupid. I responded by observing that conservatives are obsessed with bringing unwanted children to term but then insist on completely abandoning them once they’re born. No help for poor or middle-class folks with birth control, no help with abortion, no help feeding, housing, or educating the child, no help providing them with healthcare which only the very wealthy can afford, etc. Historically and statistically, when you remove both birth control and abortion services for the not-wealthy, you get a big spike in crime 15 years later. Somehow, Republicans of this sort just can’t imagine how those two things could be connected.

Yes, this cartoon caused a shitstorm on social media, but I knew it would. I don’t read 99% of the negative comments on my social media so whatever they said about me didn’t stick.

One thing a lot of people mentioned was that this story about GW and the cherry tree is mythology in the first place and therefore an early example of fake news. That’s true––although it was written after Washington’s death and so it was more a case of hero worship after the fact as opposed to an attempt to change people’s perception of a given politician during his career, as fake news is used today–– but regardless, I still don’t see how that fact is relevant to this cartoon. I sense that most people who mentioned this were just proud of themselves for knowing it isn’t a true story.

Other people pointed out that the Founding Fathers were similar in many ways to racists of today because they owned slaves, counted black men as three-fifths of a person in the Constitution, etc. and they are correct. I still think if the Founding Fathers could see Trump in today’s context, most would dig their way out of their graves and slap the crap out of every American who voted for him.

Another person asked about the different font in the balloon, which is a legitimate question. I did that to be sure the reader knew it was a tweet, and not a voice speaking through his cell phone, or whatever.

I’ll admit I’m very proud of this cartoon. It satirizes the Cheeto Mussolini and his spoiled-rich-brat style of communication about any journalism that doesn’t directly serve or flatter him, and the “ALT” aspect of the caption box calls to mind his affiliation with the “alt-right movement,” which is a sanitized name for racists and anti-semites. I don’t think any of us should stop talking about the fact that we have a Nazi-sympathizing, racist, misogynist, lying, sexual predator in the White House until he and his kind are gone. That may take a good, long time, but let’s keep our fingers crossed and hope for a miracle.

This cartoon has a fundamental error in that Spongebob actually lives underwater and his clothes fit him fine in that state. So if he ventured onto dry land, as he dried out his clothes would become too large and fall off of him. I didn’t do the cartoon that way because who wants to see his tiny, dry, square penis? Not me.

I hope you enjoyed this week’s funnies, Jazz Pickles. If you’d like to feel the deep sense of satisfaction that comes from supporting the art and ideas that you enjoy, please consider one of the ways below that you can help keep the lights on here at Rancho Bizarro. THERE ARE SOME HOLIDAYS COMING UP AND SOME OF THE STUFF LISTED BELOW WOULD MAKE TERRIFIC GIFTS!

This was another raucous week of hate mail and negative comments over one of my cartoons with an overtly political message, which I’ll discuss later in this post. I hesitate to call them “political comics” because I’m not an editorial cartoonist and my cartoons are not in the style of typical editorial cartoons. As I’ve mentioned before, cartoons are sold to newspapers as either “funny” or “editorial”, and those of us in the “funny” category are expected to stay away from heavily political content. In 99% of my comics over my 33-year career, I’ve kept to that rule but the absurdity of our current president and his administration have inspired and compelled me to an occasional political cartoon.

Along with the critics, my political comics have also garnered a lot of positive messages, emails, and comments so even though I am clearly losing conservative readers, it seems I am also picking up progressive/liberal readers who perhaps were not previously aware of my work. It is my belief that since America’s current administration is a textbook example of authoritarian fascism, it is the duty of any decent, patriotic American to speak out against it until the threat is passed. That might take a while.

My critics often chastise me for being “partisan” and using my “bully pulpit” to spread divisiveness. My response is that America’s form of democracy guarantees the right and encourages every commoner to express their partisan views; it’s kind of the whole point of the country. If you don’t like that sort of thing and think that people should keep their mouths shut and honor the flag and the president no matter what, you should move to a dictatorship. (I know, with this president you’re hoping to achieve that without having to move and I don’t blame you. Moving is a hassle.) Also, look up the definition of “bully pulpit”. Cartoonists don’t qualify. In fact, it is our job to point out the absurdities of human behavior.

Pugs and reanimated corpses are two things that are really hot right now so why not combine the two and have the best of both worlds? Insider backstory: I fashioned the Frankenstein Monster’s facial expression and body language on those I’ve actually seen expressed by friends and family members when confronted with an objet d’cute.

As I said in my FB and Twitter posts of this cartoon earlier in the week, in a just world, jails would be full of rich white assholes. Of course, assholes are not all rich nor white, but there are enough rich white assholes causing the rest of us all plenty of misery and trouble that you could easily fill some penitentiaries to the brim with them. And while their crimes typically go completely unpunished, their crimes are not without grave consequences.

Here’s an example: a poll came out last week that showed for the first time ever, a majority of Americans believe Climate Change is responsible for the growing frequency and intensity of major storms. That’s good news as it may help aim legislative efforts to curb it. But the downside is that the vast majority of that majority are Democrats. The majority of Republicans still think it’s a hoax. You may be tempted to blame the Cheeto Mussolini for that since he has said as much, but the real culprit is Fox News Channel and the rich white assholes who control its content. Why are they the only (supposed) news agency in the world that does not report on the scientific consensus about Climate Change? Because they are a propaganda network for the Republican Party, which is run by corporation-owning rich white assholes who do not want to stop polluting and raping the planet because they might lose profits. They lie to you to protect their own short-term gains in spite of the fact that they are compromising the health and well-being of every single person on the planet.

Did you know that many cave painters actually used to do this with their hands? Were they signing their work? Were they indulging their ego with a primitive kind of “selfie”? Or were they just playing with a new special effect they’d invented like a kid does when they learn how to fold a piece of paper, cut a few chunks out and end up with a snowflake?

It was erroneously assumed for centuries that cave painters were male but recently it was discovered that many were female. Of course they were––why do we always default to sexism?

I’m not sure how we figured out some were female. Maybe it’s because so many cave paintings were of ducks and bows and gingham. (There it goes again! DAMN that sexism! )

The above cartoon was the result of a premonition about my own death. I’ve got to either read faster and more hours per day or build a sturdy retaining wall between my bed and my nightstand. As it is, I wear a bike helmet when I sleep but I still fear I could be smothered.

As I knew it would, this cartoon about Trump’s racism got me into major hot water (and possibly got Bizarro canceled in one major Midwest market). That’s not surprising but what truly surprises me is how America isn’t constantly talking about the fact that our president is a self-admitted racist and Nazi sympathizer. Didn’t we fight an entire war and lose over 400,000 American lives fighting Nazism? Tolerating their parades and rallies is one thing (and is protected by the First Amendment) but allowing one to serve as our Commander in Cheif is beyond absurd. These days I often feel I am trapped in a Vonnegut novel.

Of course, this is what open-minded people get for electing a non-white person to the presidency. And then we tried to elect a WOMAN. I guess we should have known better.

And finally, here’s this cartoon about the ever-clever Swiss Army and its ability to hide useful things inside of other useful things. With the Swiss Army knife-and-boot combo, you can carve up enemy combatants on the battlefield all day, then slip into an open-toe pump in the evening and open a bottle of wine with your hidden corkscrew.

Thanks for reading, Jazz Pickles. If you enjoy my cartoons and commentary, please consider dropping a buck or two into the Tip Jar or buying a gift or two from my store. (Don’t miss that there are TWO pages.) These things all help to keep things going at Rancho Bizarro as more people read my work online for free and more newspapers fold or get taken over by Trumpers who don’t think Bizarro is respectful enough of racists.

Below are some ways you can help me to keep moving forward. Until next time, be smart, be happy, be nice. And never stop resisting the assholes.

(Rather than just screaming EMBIGGENATE, DAMN YOU! try clicking on the image.)

There is some debate over whether dogs actually feel and understand guilt or if, over the many thousands of years they have lived alongside humans they have simply evolved to pretend to be contrite when we express anger. As much as I love dogs and want to attribute higher emotional and mental functions to them, I’ve come to believe it’s an act.

We currently live with two canine bitches (no judgment, just proper nomenclature) one of which is almost five years old, the other less than one year old. The elder chewed and destroyed things around the house for the first couple of years, then gradually figured it out and has not been a “bad girl” since. The younger is now firmly in the destructive stage.

When we arrive home to find things chewed up and strewn about, we express anger. The older dog, who is doubtless innocent, cowers and appears wracked with guilt. She seems authentically sorrier for what she’s done than Chris Christie was that he supported Trump before the election. Meanwhile, the younger one wags her tail and hops around because she’s glad to see us, angry or otherwise.

We’ve found that no matter what interrogation techniques we use, the younger dog will neither confess nor even register that she has any idea what we’re talking about. She’s either simply too young to get it or she’s much more diabolical than we are assuming. Only time will tell.

While we’re on the topic, why don’t manufacturers of things dogs and cats like to destroy make them from a material that biologically repels them? GMOs are a big topic of controversy but where are the genetically modified shoes, cushions, and furniture that we so desperately need?

In Los Angeles, there is a terrific radio station that has a show called “Left, Right & Center” which inspired a friend of mine who lives there to think of the pun “Left, Right & Centaur”. He emailed me about it and I came up with the above setting and punchline for it. I added his name to the bottom of the cartoon as thanks for the donation.

I wanted it to read “horse’s ass,” of course, but too many of my client newspapers would have objected to the use of that word on the funny pages, so I had to sanitize it for your protection. I hope you all feel clean and protected.

There is most certainly no bigger horse’s ass in Washington than Der Führer Trump, but he is most certainly not the only one. Over ninety percent of Republicans qualify at the moment simply for allowing him to get into office and not raising a finger to stop his authoritarian, fascist policies. And then there’s also their other horrendous behavior like attempting to take health insurance away from tens of millions of non-rich Americans. Soon they will lower taxes on polluting corporations and the rich and taxes for the poor and middle class will rise. Just watch. (If at this point you still think the GOP cares about anyone other than the top 1% wealthiest Americans, your head is so far up your ass you’re going to need every penny of that health insurance you almost lost to remove it.)

I sat on a jury in a civil trial once and have been called up more than a dozen times. (I’m just lucky like that.) As a juror, I deliberated with other jurors and as a prospective juror, I have heard the questions and comments of many dozens of other prospective jurors during voir dire. From these experiences, I have determined that I will do everything in my power not to EVER let my fate fall into the hands of a “jury of my peers”.

If you think I’m being overly cynical, just look at how many people think worshipping the American flag like a mindless puppet is more important than the rights of free speech and peaceful protest that the flag symbolizes. At least a few of those folks are likely to be on your jury. And if nearly a quarter of Americans couldn’t see from a mile away what a worthless, self-serving charlatan Donald Trump was and chose to vote for him, it is likely around a quarter of your jury will be similarly judgmentally and intellectually deficient. Good luck with that.

DISCLAIMER: The above cartoon does NOT advocate bestiality nor insinuate homosexuality. The male-appearing rodeo clown is actually a masculine lesbian and the bull is a fully consenting adult. Neither stood when the National Anthem was played before the rodeo, however, so feel free to complain about that if you like.

I’ve not been in the dating pool for some time now and have no plans or wishes to return so would some of you who are reading this please try this line on some folks and let me know how it works?

This mermaid gag got a lot of questions, mostly from foreigners who didn’t understand the reference, which is an American idiom. I assume there are many Americans who didn’t get it either so allow me to explain. For quite a long time, American teenagers have used baseball terms to talk about how far they went sexually with a partner. “First base” is kissing (passionately, not like you kiss your elderly aunt at Christmas––unless you do and if that’s the case, yuck) “second base” is touching female breasts under or over clothing, “third base” is touching below the waist but not intercourse, and a “home run” is intercourse. (Don’t even ask what “fouling out,” “hitting the batter,” “charging the mound,” or “fumbling a grounder” is.)

In the case of mermaids, a person can really only get to “second base”. I suppose she could lay eggs and a male could try to ejaculate onto the eggs, but that’s hardly worthy of the original meaning of “home run”.

Considering the overtly sexual nature of this cartoon, I’m surprised (and thankful) that none of my client editors complained or asked for a replacement. Bizarro got canceled in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel this week, however, so it is possible that this cartoon (and/or my political ones) may have been why. If you live in that market, please email or call them and complain about Bizarro’s cancellation. Local readers and subscribers are the only people who have any sway over these kinds of decisions. Those of us here at Rancho Bizarro will be in your debt!

Don’t worry, kids. No matter how lousy Santa’s health, he’s reportedly been alive for more than 1500 years so I wouldn’t worry about him dropping dead anytime soon.

If you enjoy the humor, art, and/or opinions you get from Bizarro and read it online for free, please consider visiting my new store and helping to support my efforts by purchasing some gifts for yourself or others. If that doesn’t appeal, you can make a one-time donation or ongoing monthly contribution to my Tip Jar. The links below tell you about a couple other ways to be a patron of Bizarro. Olive Oyl and I deeply appreciate your readership and financial support and am proud to call every one of you Jazz Pickles our imaginary friends!

I’ve been thinking a lot about Bigfoot lately, although I’ve no idea why. In the cartoon above, we see that Sasquatch belongs to a family in which each member has one oversized thing. (Get your mind out of the gutter.)

Not long ago, I published a cartoon about Bigfoot and his relationship to Trump. You can see it here. The cartoon inspired me to create a Bigfoot campaign poster and put it on a T-shirt. I’m offering it in several styles and colors, so be sure to poke around a bit and find one you like. I think this design is super fun and a subtle way to tell people where you stand politically. (Way out in the wilderness where it’s safe. Relatively) As always, your purchase helps keep the lanterns full of oil here at Rancho Bizarro so we can keep poking the Orange Menace with our cartoon swords late into the night. Please also consider forwarding the link to folks whom you think might like the shirt! See the wonderful, aformentioned product here.

Contrary to what many people think, dogs are not the only pets that do tricks. Cats are very good at disappearing and alligators are excellent at making others disappear.

I’ve never participated in group therapy per se but I’ve participated in a number of support groups, which are very similar except they aren’t normally led by a licensed therapist. I’m a big believer in this kind of thing because when you’re struggling in your personal life, it is so easy to fall into the trap of over examining every miserable aspect of your existence and losing touch with how your life stacks up against others in your community. You may rightly be upset that your husband of 30 years left you for a 22-year-old stripper, but then someone else at your support group tells the story of how they lost their husband and two children to an escaped pet alligator. Suddenly your problems seem a little more manageable.

The benefits of support groups are deeper and more subtle than that, of course, but you get the idea.

Whenever I see people dressed in mascot costumes––whether they’re advertising some commercial establishment on the street or trying to entertain kids or whatever––I always wonder about the person inside. Perhaps it is a teenager and this is an acceptable, temporary job for them, but maybe it’s a formerly successful, middle-aged guy who lost his family to an escaped alligator, became an alcoholic, and can’t hold down a better job. That makes me sad.

A few of my readers have criticized me for doing cartoons about politics in the past year. Some don’t like them because they are pro-Trump, others are just sick to death of politics being in their face 24/7. So here’s a shout-out to show that I sympathize. And I truly, deeply do sympathize in a meaningful way. If I lived in the U.S. right now, I’d be pulling my hair out. On our recent visit there, the Cheeto Mussolini and people analyzing his latest embarrassing tantrum or scandal were everywhere, constantly; bars, restaurants, airport waiting areas, etc. Here in Mexico, I can limit myself to reading a few headlines and stories online and I don’t watch any TV news or video whatsoever. In doing so, I’m able to go many months without ever seeing his face or hearing his voice. It’s a life saver.

This cartoon came from a comment I made while writing a blog post a while back and I figured it might make a good cartoon. Also worth noting is the poster on the wall that says, “The Electoral College and the End of the World” which shows these three steps: 1) Russia meddling in America’s election just enough to get Trump elected via the Electoral College, 2) the American fascist authoritarian facing off against the North Korean fascist authoritarian, 3) a nuclear mushroom cloud. The book on the kid’s desk says, “What is This? The History of Books”.

This cartoon actually happened to me. One day I was at my drawing table and chased with a flyswatter what I thought was an elusive mosquito. I wasted a couple of minutes looking like an idiot before I realized it was a floater in my eye. I was worried this gag might be too soft, not funny enough to relate to, maybe even too vague but it turned out to get lots of comments on social media from others who’ve done the exact same thing. Funny how that kind of stuff works out.

Thanks for reading this week’s roundup, Jazz Pickles, and not just skimming the cartoons in 9 seconds and moving on to Alex Jones’ website to see what institutional insanity looks like. If you enjoy what I’m doing, please recommend my work to your friends and consider some of the options I’ve listed above and below that help me make ends meet as increasingly more folks read my work for free on the Interwebs.

If you are a person with at least one eye that works in the usual fashion and you have the average amount of observational skills, you may notice the difference between the cartoon I’ve posted above and the one that appeared in your local newspaper’s funnies today or at the top center spot on today’s Bizarro.com homepage. The one in newspapers and on Bizarro.com’s homepage is the one I submitted for publication four weeks ago––the one in this blog is one I took from my computer and posted here moments before I typed this sentence. Sometimes when I look at a cartoon four weeks later as I prepare to post it, I see a way to improve the gag in some small way and so I change it. That’s the reason for today’s change. I think this version sells the gag a little better than the original one. (I’ll tell you the difference at the end of this blog post in case you can’t spot it.)*

For decades I’ve thought that certain jogging apparel looks a bit like underwear and I’ve amused myself by imagining the jogger is chasing the person who stole their clothes. That occasional fantasy was the simple genesis of this gag.

Once, however, when I lived in Brooklyn, I saw a heavy-set woman of about 40 jogging down the street between the parked cars and traffic around lunchtime actually in her underwear. She was wearing a large, longline, white bra, a mid-thigh-length, pink slip, pantyhose, and running shoes. My guess was she was in the habit of jogging during her lunch hour at work, had forgotten her jogging outfit and just figured “what’s the difference?” Or, perhaps she jogged that way every day because, in truth, what is the difference?

I’ve also long thought it was funny how most of us will appear in public in swimwear but would be mortified to be seen in public in our undies, in spite of the fact that they often cover more of us than the swimwear. It’s more about context and looking out of place than it is about modesty.

Based on social media activity this week, most people seem to enjoy the ridiculous nature of the above cartoon but a few folks left comments about not understanding it. I’ve always had trouble relating to people who don’t understand absurdist humor. How someone can tolerate this utterly surreal existence we humans have built for ourselves without a sense of humor about the absurdity of it all is beyond me. Most days, it’s the only thing that keeps me from jumping off a cliff.

This cartoon is something of an illustrated history of human religion. This dog worships the entities who are responsible for his food and shelter in the same way that early humans assumed that the good and bad that happened to them was the result of some bigger, more powerful being(s). Long after our species has proven where things like weather, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, famine, floods, and diseases actually come from, most of us humans still worship imaginary entities in an effort to keep our luck falling on the “good” side.

This is also a big part of what’s fun about having a dog; you get a taste of what it is to be a god. They worship and fear you and you control their lives. With my dogs, I perpetuate this idea by dressing as Zeus and threatening them with a large, cardboard lightning bolt.

Wouldn’t it be nice if combating the ravages of old age was as simple as injecting peanut butter into your wrinkles? People with peanut allergies could use cream cheese.

I’ve been on a Medusa kick lately. Not sure why. I’ve done a few about her over the years but my favorite one (below) was never published in Bizarro. It appears in a book of mine and was published in Scandinavia years ago but it is too racy for American newspapers. We can elect a narcissistic, racist, adolescent maniac to the most powerful office in the world but to publish a drawing of a butt in the funny pages might cause western civilization to collapse. Makes perfect sense. Laugh at it or jump off a cliff, I suppose.

My feelings would be a lot less hurt if you’d drop by my store and check out the new shirts, totes, mugs, and stuff that I’m selling. There are various designs, styles, colors, etc.. so dig around. Below are some pics of a few of the offerings. There are two pages, so don’t miss the other one.

If I may be immodest briefly, I’m pretty happy with this Bigfoot for president cartoon. With America’s current embarrassingly ludicrous choice of a childish, lying, con-man, TV gameshow host, carnival barker, how far behind can an imaginary redneck icon like Sasquatch be? I guarantee he’d do a lot less harm than the Cheeto Mussolini.

Speaking of shirts, I’m working on a campaign poster T-shirt for Bigfoot. (Based on this idea but not this cartoon on the shirt.) Sign up to receive an email each time I post on this blog (right now, right margin, under the FEED THE BUNNY logo) and you’ll know when I’ve added it to the store. Or “follow” my Bizarro FB page here.

I’m trying to decide if his campaign slogan should be “Make-Believe Leadership for a Make-Believe World” or “From Tiny Hands to Giant Feet”. Let me know which you like best.

In case you’re not aware, “Fashion Week” is actually a thing in New York City. Once a year, gobs of models and designers and buyers and fashion industry folks descend on NYC for a week of runway shows and all that. I don’t know what time of year they do it now, but in 2001 it was happening the week that the planes hit the World Trade Center on 9/11. According to someone I used to know in that business, a number of the models at one show believed Fashion Week was the target of those attacks. You see, to be a model you have to be pretty. Nobody asks your I.Q. and you mostly don’t need one.

That’s it for this week, Jazz Pickles. Until next time, be smart, be happy, be nice.

*THE ANSWER TO THE DIFFERENCE MENTIONED IN THE FIRST PARAGRAPH IS the runner’s shoes. I originally thought dress shoes were better for the gag but now think that running shoes make it less obvious until you’ve read what the man is saying. Delayed punch lines are always the best, I think.